Kunena 6.2.5 & module Kunena Latest 6.0.7 released

The Kunena team has announce the arrival of Kunena 6.2.5 [K 6.2.5] which is now available for download as a native Joomla extension for J! 4.3.x/4.4.x/5.0.x. This version addresses most of the issues that were discovered in K 6.1 / K 6.2 and issues discovered during the last development stages of K 6.2

Topics contains old discussions (generally more than one year ago or based on circumstances that subsequently changed) or topics resolved in other ways. Topics moved into this category are closed from further discussion.

Question Honest opinion please

More
12 years 1 month ago #1 by apc
Honest opinion please was created by apc
I a building a new site on Joomla 2.5.

I have previously used SMF and phpBB3 bridges but prefer a forum that is fully integrated.

Two questions for now:

1. Does Kuena work with Joomla 2.5?

2. Is Kunena totally seamless in that it the forums blend in with the Joomla template without the ned for additional templates or graphics modifications?

thanks.

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
12 years 1 month ago #2 by Jiminimonka
1. Kunena 1.7.2 does (out soon) and 1.7.1 does on some setups but 1.7.2. is really close (this website is Joomla 2.5 running Kunena 1.7.2).

2. You don't need a bridge for user intergration as you do with phpbb. The default template (the one on this website) has a Blend option that picks up the colours from the surrounding joomla template and does a pretty good job of matching it up.

Please read the FAQ.
Only one question per topic.
Search before you ask a question.

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
12 years 1 month ago - 12 years 1 month ago #3 by sozzled
Replied by sozzled on topic Re: Honest opinion please
G'day, apc, and thank you for your very interesting and important question. I will try to give you my honest opinion and give you unbiased feedback.

There are a lot of good web-based forum solutions available. People are attracted to Kunena for many reasons:

(1) Kunena is a native extension for Joomla. It is one of the few - if not the only - forums that works on all supported versions of Joomla (J! 1.5.25, J! 1.7.4 and J! 2.5) without the need to install "bridging software."

(2) Kunena has an active community and an active development team which means that improvements will continue to be made. Kunena is expected to have a long future ahead of it and therefore an investment in Kunena is a way of protecting the investment you have made in building your site and developing the community based around it.

(3) Kunena is open source software which means that you are able to extend and develop it to suit your own purposes.

(4) Kunena is free.

To help people make informed decisions about whether Kunena is the best forum product for their needs, there is a list of features that will help you to compare different versions of Kunena - what each offers and what you may expect - here: Kunena Features .

There are a few problems with J! 2.5.0. A new version (J! 2.5.1) was expected to be announced yesterday but this has not yet happened. Some changes were needed to K 1.7.1 so that Kunena could be classed as "J! 2.5-compatible"; even with the expected changes in J 2.5.1 (changes that affect hundreds of other Joomla extensions that cause problems with J! 2.5.0) we will still recommend that people should use K 1.7.2 in future.

K 1.7.2 will also introduce a few differences from earlier versions. Most of these differences will not be visible to most people who have used Kunena in the past but we are introducing a couple of changes now so as to prepare people for what will come in future (in K 2.0). When K 1.7.2 is released, we will continue to urge everyone who has used Kunena before to upgrade to this later version. The reason for this is that K 1.7.2 is expected to be the final release of the K 1.7 series; there are not expected to be any further versions released in K 1.7. This is not to say that people who continue to use older versions of Kunena will not be able to upgrade to K 2.0 without going through K 1.7.2 first. I am only trying to say that K 1.7.2 will give people the best chance to insure (as well as to ensure) that upgrading in future will be relatively trouble-free.

I can say, in all honesty, that there are many other forum products available that people can choose. Some of those offer features that are not currently in Kunena and some of those other forum products will, in specific instances, offer features that are better than Kunena. No forum product is perfect and everyone should decide for themselves what is the best for their needs.

Having said that, in my personal opinion, people choose Kunena because it works. Kunena has a sizeable range of features; Kunena is an active project. Kunena was designed for Joomla and will continue to develop as Joomla continues to develop. Kunena is low-cost. And lastly, there is this wonderful community that is keen to see Kunena continue to thrive and improve.
Last edit: 12 years 1 month ago by sozzled.

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
12 years 1 month ago #4 by apc
Replied by apc on topic Re: Honest opinion please

sozzled wrote: G'day, apc, and thank you for your very interesting and important question. I will try to give you my honest opinion and give you unbiased feedback.

There are a lot of good web-based forum solutions available. People are attracted to Kunena for many reasons:

(1) Kunena is a native extension for Joomla. It is one of the few - if not the only - forums that works on all supported versions of Joomla (J! 1.5.25, J! 1.7.4 and J! 2.5) without the need to install "bridging software."

(2) Kunena has an active community and an active development team which means that improvements will continue to be made. Kunena is expected to have a long future ahead of it and therefore an investment in Kunena is a way of protecting the investment you have made in building your site and developing the community based around it.

(3) Kunena is open source software which means that you are able to extend and develop it to suit your own purposes.

(4) Kunena is free.

To help people make informed decisions about whether Kunena is the best forum product for their needs, there is a list of features that will help you to compare different versions of Kunena - what each offers and what you may expect - here: Kunena Features .

There are a few problems with J! 2.5.0. A new version (J! 2.5.1) was expected to be announced yesterday but this has not yet happened. Some changes were needed to K 1.7.1 so that Kunena could be classed as "J! 2.5-compatible"; even with the expected changes in J 2.5.1 (changes that affect hundreds of other Joomla extensions that cause problems with J! 2.5.0) we will still recommend that people should use K 1.7.2 in future.

K 1.7.2 will also introduce a few differences from earlier versions. Most of these differences will not be visible to most people who have used Kunena in the past but we are introducing a couple of changes now so as to prepare people for what will come in future (in K 2.0). When K 1.7.2 is released, we will continue to urge everyone who has used Kunena before to upgrade to this later version. The reason for this is that K 1.7.2 is expected to be the final release of the K 1.7 series; there are not expected to be any further versions released in K 1.7. This is not to say that people who continue to use older versions of Kunena will not be able to upgrade to K 2.0 without going through K 1.7.2 first. I am only trying to say that K 1.7.2 will give people the best chance to insure (as well as to ensure) that upgrading in future will be relatively trouble-free.

I can say, in all honesty, that there are many other forum products available that people can choose. Some of those offer features that are not currently in Kunena and some of those other forum products will, in specific instances, offer features that are better than Kunena. No forum product is perfect and everyone should decide for themselves what is the best for their needs.

Having said that, in my personal opinion, people choose Kunena because it works. Kunena has a sizeable range of features; Kunena is an active project. Kunena was designed for Joomla and will continue to develop as Joomla continues to develop. Kunena is low-cost. And lastly, there is this wonderful community that is keen to see Kunena continue to thrive and improve.



Thank you very much for your detailed reply.

I think the 2.5 compatibility is not an issue from what you said, and the reason I asked here because Kunena would be my first choice for a native Joomla forum solution.

The other crucial factor is style compatibility which is very important to this particular site.

Bridged solutions with, e.g. phpBB3 obviously are obviously independant of the authentication, and therefore provide the opportunity to ensure the forums match the main site.

I would appreciate your comments on this aspect of kunena.

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
12 years 1 month ago #5 by sozzled
Replied by sozzled on topic Re: Honest opinion please
K 1.7.2 has been released. See forum announcements made today. See also JED entry >>> here <<<

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
12 years 1 month ago #6 by Matias
Replied by Matias on topic Re: Honest opinion please
What comes to style compatibility, it's one of the places where I must say that we are still lacking back in Kunena 1.7. Actually having better template is one of the main reasons why Kunena 2.0 is still not out - we really want to bring templating into new level, while still allowing some level of backwards compatibility to the current users (Blue Eagle compatible CSS can be imported to K2.0 and used, thus giving many administrators possibility to upgrade first and to look at the new templates later when they have more time).

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
12 years 1 month ago #7 by wingnut144

Matias wrote: Actually having better template is one of the main reasons why Kunena 2.0 is still not out


So, is there any news on the 2.0 release? Is there a beta that we can test internally?

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
12 years 1 month ago - 12 years 1 month ago #8 by sozzled
Replied by sozzled on topic Re: Honest opinion please

wingnut144 wrote:

Matias wrote: Actually having better template is one of the main reasons why Kunena 2.0 is still not out

So, is there any news on the 2.0 release? Is there a beta that we can test internally?

I think we would all agree that questions about the availability of K 2.0 - when it would like occur, etc. (which are addressed in Kunena roadmap 2012 ) - are off-topic to the central question asked at the beginning of this topic.

This topic was asked about people's honest opinions in terms of whether Kunena was a suitable option for building a website with a web-based discussion forum and, I believe, we've made an honest attempt to address those questions. In addressing those questions of course there will be discussion about what the future holds for Kunena and how Kunena will be improved so that it will become an even better choice for people who are considering it for having web-based forum discussions. However, I think we should be quite clear that such references to future developments with Kunena should not be used as a means of asking specific questions about when these things will become available, how people can join the project in order to help the team develop future versions and so forth. There are many other discussions, other opportunities, to address those questions and I don't think we should have to repeat what we have already written elsewhere.

We invite people who are genuinely interested in making a difference, people who want to assist the team by contributing solid feedback, testing, analysis and help to the team, for K 2.0. This is something we have always stated publicly. I am sure that you will also understand that having a ready-made beta test version of Kunena available to the public requires hard work and we don't want to simply say "here it is, go play with it" if we didn't have confidence that it would not only work but work reliably. We're getting there, slowly but surely, by hard work.

Kunena is open-source software. This means that anyone (anyone who has the know-how and the familiarity with developing software in a collaborative way) can obtain the source code and use the same code as what the developers are currently building. The source code is available at GitHub for anyone to see and use, if they know how. By the same token, however, GitHub is not for "everyone" but, if you have the know-how, yes it's there and yes you can try out K 2.0 for yourself.

You can see the day-by-day progress of K 2.0 by looking at GitHub. If you know how, you can create a beta test build from GitHub but that is not the same as saying that it's our job to provide a detailed instructional guide on how to go about doing that. If you are serious and genuine about helping the project then you may consider joining the testing team. I hope this answers your question.
Last edit: 12 years 1 month ago by Jiminimonka.

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

Time to create page: 0.448 seconds